Re: Town, Zaun, and Celtic Dun-

>
> > You might want to look at the map of -tu:n used in placenames in
> > the 'Maps from Udolph' folder in the Files section. Pretty
> > interesting distribution. Note the overwhelming density of
> > occurrences in England and that a similar density is found only
> > in the Mälar valley in Sweden (the heart of the land of the
> > Svear) and in what I suspected was a 'staging area' for the
> > invasion of England, or rather where the Germani were waiting for
> > 'employment' in someone's private army, in a discussion long ago.
> > Brian didn't like it.
> >
> >
> I'm not sure what you mean by this 'staging area' (I tried to look
> for it in the archives but found nothing) --

Try from here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/29106

> are you saying that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes first gathered
> their soldiers in the Mälar valley?

No. See below.

> If it was the Germani waiting for 'employment' in someone's private
> army, what would that have to do with the increased frequency of
> place names in -tu:n in this region?

A lot of young males waiting for employment in a violent enterprise. Securing your accommodation would be a good idea.

> Note also that the map shows a localized high density of such
> place-names in the Picardy/West Flanders region. As a place-name
> element in Sweden or Picardy/West Flanders, do you think it meant
> 'village' or some kind of 'enclosure', or 'farmstead', 'homestead',
> or could it have actually meant 'fence, hedge, enclosing barrier'?
> (See below)

I just came up with this one to explain what the Mälar valley has to do with it:
There is an old theory that the then important town of Sigtuna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigtuna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Sigtuna
is a translation of Celtic Segodunum. The present conviction is that it's from *si:k- "humid ground, etc" and the 'civilian' meaning of *tu:n. Supposing (like I do) that the invasion of Svear to Svealand was the last territorial expansion before the conquest of England, the equation Sig-tuna = Sego-dunum in people's minds might have changed the meaning of tu:n at the next conquest.

> In any case, what is meant by 'space between the houses in a
> village'? This suggests yard-space (where side-yards meet between
> houses) to me.

I don't think I even know what a side yard is. In this part of the world, farms used to be built as three or four longish buildings set at right angles around a courtyard.

I've seen 'tun' defined in some Sw. dial. as a cattle path between houses.
Here's Hellquist
http://runeberg.org/svetym/1115.html
I've looked at de Vries' definition, but I'm not impressed by it, so I'll leave it out.

> Or are you talking about old in-earth settlements
> with stone walls, which would have a space or corridor between
> individual house sites (bounded by these stone walls)?

What's an in-earth settlement?
Within the village, houses usually didn't have private space around them, I believe. That came with the agricultural reforms of the late 18th cent., when houses were moved out of their village to individual cultivation areas.

> I found that Bosworth-Toller mentions OIcel 'tún' meant, in
> addition to 'farmstead', 'homestead', also 'an enclosure within
> which a house is built' -- suggesting to me those old in-earth
> settlements. If this was the original meaning of *tu:nam in Gmc,
> it sounds like a miniature version of a 'walled town'. The other
> languages have, according to Bosworth-Toller: OFris 'fence', OLG
> (=OS?) 'stone or brick wall' ('maceria'), OHG 'fence, hedge
> ('sepis'), stone or brick wall' ('maceria'), Norwegian 'court,
> farmyard', and Du 'garden, fence'. I desire to know what is
> considered to be the most original of these meanings -- if it _is_
> borrowed from Celtic, it seems the OIcel and OE ('enclosure with
> houses, village') meanings are probably closer to the original
> Celtic meaning than are the OHG, OLG, and OFris meanings, would you
> agree? But if the Germanic and Celtic words go back to an IE root
> meaning 'to close, finish, come full circle', then the OHG, OLG,
> and OFris meanings could well be the earlier -- what do you think?

Problem is, you're not the only one. Those dictionaries I've seen seem to treat it like an open question.

> I'm eager to know for personal reasons.

BTW, my paternal grandfather's first name was Gerhard. I puzzles me, since it's not a common name in Denmark.


Torsten